“This decision is true to the BSA’s mission and core values outlined in the Scout Oath and Law. The values of Scouting – trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind, brave and reverent, for example – are important for both young men and women,” said Michael Surbaugh, the BSA’s Chief Scout Executive. “We believe it is critical to evolve how our programs meet the needs of families interested in positive and lifelong experiences for their children. We strive to bring what our organization does best – developing character and leadership for young people – to as many families and youth as possible as we help shape the next generation of leaders.”

A crappy economy and decaying family units were cited as reasons for the policy change. “Families today are busier and more diverse than ever. Most are dual-earners and there are more single-parent households than ever before [1], making convenient programs that serve the whole family more appealing,” reads the official statement.

Merely admitting girls into a fun program itself is not problematic. But these things don’t happen in a vacuum. Clubs, groups, and organizations delineated by sex are increasingly under pressure to be gender inclusive, and it’s with long-standing institutions caving to progressive pressure that I, and I imagine most others rankled by the BSA policy change, take umbrage.

Further, these changes are typically one-sided — how often do men complain about being excluded from women-only events? (There are jokes aplenty here, which I will leave to you, dear reader). Men and the sanctity of their space is increasingly marginalized, and their territory scaled back to suit neo-feminist whims which are delusional at best.

Thankfully, and there is a “thankfully” here, there will still be some kind of separation between the girls and boys:

Starting in the 2018 program year, families can choose to sign up their sons and daughters for Cub Scouts. Existing packs may choose to establish a new girl pack, establish a pack that consists of girl dens and boy dens or remain an all-boy pack. Cub Scout dens will be single-gender — all boys or all girls. Using the same curriculum as the Boy Scouts program, the organization will also deliver a program for older girls, which will be announced in 2018 and projected to be available in 2019, that will enable them to earn the Eagle Scout rank. This unique approach allows the organization to maintain the integrity of the single gender model while also meeting the needs of today’s families.

This decision expands the programs that the Boy Scouts of America offers for both boys and girls. Although known for its iconic programs for boys, the BSA has offered co-ed programs since 1971 through Exploring and the Venturing program, which celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2018. The STEM Scout pilot program is also available for both boys and girls.

There are many things I’ve learned through years of dating and most especially from being a wife — men do best when you leave them alone. I will not pretend I understand why, but this is a well-established rule of the universe. It’s more than a little infuriating to see every last vestige of mandom cleaned up to suit the ladies.

No word yet on whether the Girl Scouts plan to offer reciprocity by admitting boys.

UPDATE: Girl Scouts respond and they’re not happy

JUST IN: Girl Scouts responds to Boy Scouts' decision to admit girls. Here are excerpts of my conversation with an executive. pic.twitter.com/UVQy1z2Wkl

Existing packs may choose to establish a new girl pack, establish a pack that consists of girl dens and boy dens or remain an all-boy pack. Cub Scout dens will be single-gender — all boys or all girls.

You know and I know that within a year a Leftist judge will end the practice of gender separate packs, troops, etc. in the “Boy” Scouts. The Girl Scouts will not be touched.

My son was in Boy Scouts. My daughters were in Girl Scouts. My wife ran two Girl Scout troops to make sure that each girl had her own to be part of. I was an assistant Scoutmaster for my son’s Boy Scout troop. Could not be a full Scoutmaster, because a Peace Officer’s schedule is not regular enough to be in full charge, but I made most meetings and about half the outings.

As a former VOLUNTEER scout leader and scoutmaster, I can tell you I would NEVER have done so if scouts had included girls. I was a youth leader in scouts and church groups for over 15 years. Don’t know that I would have given all that time in todays hypersensitive environment. As close as I thought I had monitored what the boys were doing I heard later from my sons that inappropriate things happened that I was unaware of. These kind of volunteer are SO important to the development of our youth! They should not be put into so much legal danger. This also affects the importance of Scoutings role in creating a large cohort of Christian gentlemen so important to the future of our communities, families and the women that might eventually marry them.

My son is involved in Trail Life (http://www.traillifeusa.com/), a Christian-based alternative to boy scouts for boys/young men that evolved after the homosexual imbroglio. Last I heard, it had 26,000 member scouts and was rapidly rising. He loves the activities and we love the faith-based focus that permeates all they do.

“Obvious sexist hegemony by the BSA (Boy Scouts of America) to kill the GSA (Girl Scouts of America).”

Perhaps not obvious, but it’s a possibility. Consider the history of YMCA vs that of YWCA. The YW chose an explicity political, increasingly feminist path and today it’s hard to find one that’s still functioning. Whereas the YMCA chose to serve girls and families as well as men and boys, and today many of these are thriving.

So, yes, if BSA can somehow resist the bullying of SJWs and maintain some fidelity to its basic principles, it just might marginalize GSA.

It’s amazing that it’s come to this, but the writing was on the wall when the BSA caved in to the homosexuals.

The flip side of this is that perhaps there wouldn’t be so many girls interested in joining the Boy Scouts if the Girl Scouts were more interesting. In the BSA, boys got to go camping, learn knots, learn survival skills, and so on. In contrast, what did the Girl Scouts offer? Selling cookies, learning crafts, and other things that would not appeal to what we used to call tomboys. Besides, the Girl Scout uniforms were…blech 😉

IMHO, the GSA has brought this upon themselves. In recent years they’ve been dabbling in SJW stuff anyhow, so between the boring factor, the SJW agenda, and the current societal craze for all things transgendered, it’s little wonder things have reached this point.

I haven’t looked at the program recently, but a few years back GSA had gotten rid of most of the badges, down to just 30 per age group, and for what used to be Cadettes (maybe it was the junior’s age group) the ‘Science’ badge was, I kid you not, “The Science of Beauty”.

Nope.

No badges on basic car repair, camping and outdoors stuff, none of the great choices we had as options back when I was a Junior and Cadette, just SJW and girly stuff. And major, major emphasis on the annual cookie sales, to the exclusion of much else. If the BSA had had a parallel girls’ program back then, both of mine would have been begging to sign up in a heartbeat.

The fact the the Girl Scouts organization sees this as threatening means that it’s probably a good thing. It’s a smart marketing move by the Boy Scouts – though I wonder how much they consulted local leaders beforehand. Local councils in the Girl Scouts have started pushing back at the national organization’s abandonment of traditional Girl Scouting in favor of feminism.

If it’s implemented the way the BSA says it will do it, with single sex dens in the Cub Scouts, and presumably separate troops in the Boy Scouts, it could work and put an end to the Girl Scouts. I stopped buying Girl Scout cookies a long time ago because of the national organization’s leftist political slant.

I realize that some progressives will pump their fists and say, “Yes. Its about time”. But, there is a reason why the genders tend to segregate for fraternization. Just go to any party or get together. What happens? Women tend to cluster with women, for discussions, and men with men. There is some overlap, but generally the crowd ends up splitting along gender lines. If left to their on devises this gender separation naturally occurs. In order to achieve their delusional reality, Progressives attempt to force the genders to interact, to a much higher degree than they would normally.

Now, I have no idea exactly what the reason for this is. But, it will result in either the girls being ostracized and leaving, in which case the Boy Scout organization will be vilified, or male membership will decline to the point where the organization can not afford to exist.

This is not a good idea, even though it is initially limited to the Cubs and Eagles.

Back home everyone I know that would have a girl in the scouts has ditched the Girl Scouts for another group whose name I don’t recall right now.

But basically a lot of the Girl Scouts target audience fled to an alternative group once the Girl Scouts started doing stupid sjw stuff including lectures on sex toys, abortion, etc without parental notice.

Although it’s surreal when I think about how many different things have been completely corrupted perverted and destroyed by the long march of the left through our institutions.

They even managed to screw up feminism. It’s all about infantilizing women as helpless victims that have no responsibility for the choices they make. Completely circled back to the time when men were held responsible for the actions of the women that were with them. Unbelievable.

I can say for certain my troop won’t be going coed. At a local level, there are no leaders willing to take on the headaches of a coed troop. That and my wife firmly announced tonight that I wouldn’t be a leader in a coed troop.

Trail Life USA is about to see a bump in membership. We won’t jump unless local troops are forced to go coed. Question is- What is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints going to do? BSA has been their official young men’s youth program.

The Boy Scouts was a huge part of my youth and making Eagle Scouts is still, in my mind, my greatest achievement. With that said, I cannot even imagine what it would have been like to have even one girl involved. We were never politically correct. When we were in uniform we were impeccable. When we were camping or doing outdoor activities we were dirty and disgusting. Much of what we did was teaching boys to be men. I truly do not know how that could have accommodated girls. My wife was a troop leader in our daughters’ Girl Scouts troop and they were very very different. The biggest difference was camping. We had pup tents and slept on drop cloths on the ground. They slept in cabins with all the amenities.

Last point, I’m not sure what they have now but back then we had an organization called the Explorers. This group included girls and boys, often ones that were simultaneously in Girl and Boy Scouts. If this was a good option, it would still be around today and if it is still around, Boy Scouts doesn’t need to compete with it.

Explorers still exists. It’s a part of the BSA and is co-ed. It is not “traditional” Scouting anymore, it’s Posts are generally sponsored by Police Departments, Fire Departments, etc. and are career-oriented. There is also a co-ed division of the BSA that is oriented towards outdoor activities, etc. like the rest of traditional Scouting. It’s called Venturing. The split occurred in the 90’s.

I’ve been a Scouter (adult leader) for 25 years. I’ve had relatively extensive contact with Scouting programs in other countries, almost all of which have girls in every level and who seem to make it work. I think this will work as long as they stick to not mixing girls and boys in the same units at the Boy Scout level, which appears to be the plan. I’m sure that at least to start many sponsoring organizations will choose to only run all-boy Troops and not all-girl Troops. In any case, to run an all-girl Troop the BSA will insist that there be female leaders (as they do with Venturing Crews now), and my guess is that you’ll have a hard time finding adult females who want to spend 8 or 9 weekends plus an entire week of summer camp eating and sleeping outdoors with relatively rustic sanitation facilities.

They’ll get the girls. Not as many as boy, but then my Venture Crew is made up of the sisters of boys in my Boy Scout Troop who watched what their brothers were doing and said “I want to do that”. And to answer the GSUSA (they really don’t like to be called the GSA, BTW), the girls who are looking for this kind of program are not looking to join them.

America now has two generations of men raised by women. Look at the state we’re in. It’s not that women are bad and men are good, but both sexes offer nurturing and parenting in different ways. Young boys today need to have strong, positive male examples. Throw girls into the mix and it’s all screwed up. Another notch on the belt for political correctness.

Boy scouts kowtows to leftist pressure to integrate, then gets criticized (probably by the same people) by the left when it does. You can’t win so why play the game? I guarantee Girl Scouts won’t admit boys, not with all that Toxic Masculinity they’d bring with them.